We use the following guidelines in arriving at a decision on whether a campus of an institution can be considered separately for rankings purposes.
- Does the international branch campus have its own university principal (president, chancellor or vice-chancellor depending on the local custom) that does NOT report into the leadership of the main campus? This is a strong indicator of distinct autonomous governance.
- Does the additional campus have a distinct name/brand/identity/domain? e.g. ucla.edu; berkeley.edu – these sites look and feel very distinct from one another giving each a distinct identity.
- Do researchers publishing at each location publish under discernibly different affiliation identifiers that can be isolated reliably in Scopus?
- Do the university print a distinct name on different campus degree certificates?
If the answer is NO to ANY of these questions, then we will not treat the campuses as an autonomous entity. When a campus has been determined to be autonomous, we will evaluate and analyze it as a separate university, completely in-line with the process for any other university in the ranking. It will have no effect on the parent institution.
Where a campus is determined to be non-autonomous, its data (reputation, staff/student, research, sustainability etc.) will be analyzed as part of the whole institution. Please find more on how international branch campuses are evaluated.